Random thoughts from a grace saved sinner, small church pastor, and home-school dad.

For it is by grace you have been saved...

Monday, July 28, 2014

Redefining Culture - One Hero at a Time

(Note, this may be a meaningless rant for many (and maybe
it is) but there is a serious point in here)

First they told us Green Lantern is gay.Then they announced Thor is a woman.And now we're told that Captain America is black.Those are just some of the
changes made to some iconic heroes from my childhood.Not that I have a problem with women heroes,
the comic universe is full of great ones: Jean Grey, Storm, Invisible Girl,
Wasp, etc.And it’s obviously not that I have
anything against a black superhero; again there is a rich history of “ethnic”
heroes: Luke Cage, Falcon, Black Panther, etc.And as for the Gay Lantern, well, yes I do have a problem there, but….

Here’s the deal.Why
do we feel the need to redefine established characters to reflect what we think
is the politically correct worldview?I
mean, come on, Thor is not only an established comic character, but a character
from ancient mythology who is obviously a male character.He’s not a woman. Just like when the Doctor Who universe was recently
in need of a new Doctor, there were cries from a few that the new Doctor should
be a woman.Why?He’s a male character.

The issue with Captain America, for me, is not the
racial issue, but by making the Falcon become the new Captain America, you’ve
completely changed the whole deal.Cap
is a solid, moral, even old fashioned kind of guy.And the comic folks think that’s a bad thing,
so they want to replace him with a modern guy who has none of Cap’s old moral
moorings.Nothing about race there, just
about character.Captain America will
cease to be the hero he was, simply because we want to redefine everything to
reflect our own modern standards.

And the whole Gay Lantern thing?That’s so much an obvious ploy to make
homosexuality seem mainstream to our younger generations that it’s hardly worth
mentioning.Except for this reason:we’re not limiting it to fictional
superheroes.

I know that many will have stopped reading by this point
because I’m ranting about fictional comic characters that they don’t even care
about.But the point is that we are
doing the same sort of thing with real, historical figures as well.We want to go back, and with our “modern”
glasses on, reinterpret the past so that our own immoral values are vindicated.

The most recent example might be the suggestions coming out
(pardon the pun) that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was gay.For those of you who might not know, Bonhoeffer
was a German pastor who resisted the Nazi regime and was imprisoned and died
for that cause.I’m not ahistorical scholar, and I haven’t read the
book which puts this theory forward so firmly, but I like the way this article summarizes
things.Even if Bonhoeffer did have a
close relationship, even a deep love for another man, why does that have to
automatically mean it was sexual? Only our over sexualized minds would go
there.

For years I’ve heard from liberal, gay-agenda folks that
King David had a romantic relationship with Jonathan.Looking at these biblical characters, and
seeing a deep love for one another, our modern immoral mindset can’t see how
two men can care deeply for one another without it being sexual.So we try to read our warped understandings
back on to them.As the article points
out, this says more about our modern preoccupations than anything else.

The same retroactive arguments have famously been applied to
President Abraham Lincoln among others.I even heard one blasphemous suggestion that Jesus and His disciple John
had a romantic relationship based on John being called the “disciple Jesus loved.”Taking that and twisting it into something
lewd reminds me of junior high boys giggling and laughing over some rude
innuendo.

Now, please don’t hear me equating a character being a woman
or being a non-white ethnic background as being immoral.I know the liberals want to link
homosexuality with the civil rights movement, and there are so many holes in
that link that I don’t have time to begin. That’s not the issue.

I simply wanted to use the desire to change these fictional
characters in an attempt to be “politically correct” as an illustration of our
warped sense of trying to rewrite history to fit our modern sensibilities.We seem to abhor standards.We hate things that disagree with the way we
want the world to work.And so we try to
rewrite not only fictional history, but actual history, to make us feel better
about ourselves.

There may be some well meaning value to that.I mean, I’d love to go back and change a bit
of history myself.I’d love to undo the
Crusades and the horrors done by sinful men in the name of Christ.But I can’t.That’s just the way it was.I
simply need to be sure I don’t repeat their mistakes.

So, I guess there are two warnings/pleas here.One, just be aware that the culture will do
whatever it can to reshape our thought patterns to match their own skewed view
of reality.Having a gay superhero is
certainly aimed at teaching young folks that aberrant behavior is normal.Making Bonhoeffer gay will make it look like
this is much more normal.Be wise and be
aware of those efforts.

And two, please, can’t we just leave things alone?If we’re so worried about letting people be
who they are, then let Steve Rogers continue to be Captain America.Let Thor continue to be the son of Odin.Let them be who they are without trying to
rewrite them to be something we think the modern world will more readily
approve.And for heaven’s sake let’s
apply that to the real world, and let history be what it is, not what we want
it to be.